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cedar_groveFrom The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.
Such a simple secret: by letting things out, we also let things in. So if you're cut off, in pain, estranged, numb-sing, give voice to anything. It needn't sound pretty. Simply, bravely, open despite the difficulty and let what is in out, and what is out in. Sing, and your life will continue.
I love song and singing. I love plainsong and chant... and yet, I don't sing nearly often enough.
In times past people sang - working songs, protest songs, story songs... even wordless chants. It didn't need to make sense, it didn't need to rhyme or have complex rhythms or harmonies (though often they did, simply throught the interaction of other human voices). We simply sang.
Those we think of as 'simple' or 'primitive' - those indiginous cultures throughout the world that have kept their heritages and their connections with the Land and with the Soul within which they live... they still sing. I ask you, who is the more simple? Who is the more primitive, a people who give voice to the inner, let out the pain and let in the life, or those of us in the west who refuse to give voice to life and to the experiences of life? Except perhaps within 'acceptable' circumstances, such as in the hymns of a service for any of life's pivotal moments.
Why can we not simply sing our joy and pain? It is a sad symptom of the spiritual state of humanity in the west, I think.
When last I sang, (outside of those situations I have already given), I do not truly recall, but having made this realisation, perhaps it is something that I should do more often... perhaps in with those morning and evening orisons that I still haven't started...
Song is not a luxury,
but a necessary way of being in the world.
Such a simple secret: by letting things out, we also let things in. So if you're cut off, in pain, estranged, numb-sing, give voice to anything. It needn't sound pretty. Simply, bravely, open despite the difficulty and let what is in out, and what is out in. Sing, and your life will continue.
I love song and singing. I love plainsong and chant... and yet, I don't sing nearly often enough.
In times past people sang - working songs, protest songs, story songs... even wordless chants. It didn't need to make sense, it didn't need to rhyme or have complex rhythms or harmonies (though often they did, simply throught the interaction of other human voices). We simply sang.
Those we think of as 'simple' or 'primitive' - those indiginous cultures throughout the world that have kept their heritages and their connections with the Land and with the Soul within which they live... they still sing. I ask you, who is the more simple? Who is the more primitive, a people who give voice to the inner, let out the pain and let in the life, or those of us in the west who refuse to give voice to life and to the experiences of life? Except perhaps within 'acceptable' circumstances, such as in the hymns of a service for any of life's pivotal moments.
Why can we not simply sing our joy and pain? It is a sad symptom of the spiritual state of humanity in the west, I think.
When last I sang, (outside of those situations I have already given), I do not truly recall, but having made this realisation, perhaps it is something that I should do more often... perhaps in with those morning and evening orisons that I still haven't started...
